More on the Draft

by Patrick Newman (Aug 14, 2009)

After writing those original posts, I came across some interesting
ideas put forth by writers whom I read regularly. Here are a couple of
the more interesting ones:

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus speculates that we might see a more controlled draft in the future:

Said one exec, "Look, Bobby Abreu
can't find a job and then signs for $5 million. While 16-year-old are
getting signed off sandlots in the Dominican for $3 and $4 million?
That's the kind of thing that's going to get the union going," he
added, while predicting than during the next bargaining session, once
the players figure out what they want, them giving into financially
harnessing the signing system for both draftees and international
players will be what they use for leverage.

There are also some indications that both sides might not be
willing to wait for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, as
multiple sources have indicated that the reason for Bryce Harper's
early entry into college in order to be eligible for the 2010 draft
revolves as much around his desire to sign within a system with no
limits, rather than being subject a more controlled draft that could be
in place sometime down the road.

Jim Allen of the Daily Yomiuri seems to favor more of a universally free system:

[Junichi] Tazawa was able to choose
the club he thought was the best fit for him. A Japanese who aspires to
take his game to the highest levels here has to negotiate with the team
assigned to him through NPB's draft. By going to America, he could
choose from among different options.

Draft apologists say the system is necessary to maintain
competitive balance, which it has. But its purpose from Day 1 was to
cheat amateurs of the right to sell their own services to the highest
bidder.

In most markets, this would be considered contemptible. It's an
indictment of the baseball business that depriving people of their
rights is standard operating procedure in MLB and NPB and acceptable to
the fans.

Commetor Crawdad of the Orioles Hangout, had my favorite response to my original post:

What might work better would be that teams pay into
a draft bank. The bank receive money in a progressive format where
teams that take in more money than others pay more to it. Each team is
allotted 35 slots and those slots have a cost fixed to them that
decrease.